The weather’s getting hotter — but not quite as hot as the generative AI space, which saw a slew of new models released this week, including Meta’s Llama 3.
In other AI news, Hyundai-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics unveiled an electric-powered humanoid follow-up to its long-running Atlas robot, which it recently retired.
And Rebecca and Sean report on layoffs at Tesla , which they say hit high performers and gutted some departments.
AnalysisGoogle Cloud bets on generative AI: Ron writes about how Google Cloud is investing heavily in generative AI, as evidenced by the string of announcements during Google’s Cloud Next conference earlier in the month.
Generative AI in health: Generative AI is coming for healthcare — but not everyone’s thrilled.
Paddy Cosgrave, the co-founder of the Web Summit tech conference, is returning to his role as CEO after resigning in October over controversial statements he made about the Israel/Gaza war last year on social media.
“As Web Summit becomes bigger, our aim should be to make it smaller for our attendees.
More opportunistically, as with Facebook, the emphasis on community is a counterweight to Web Summit’s bigger business aim: scale, in Web Summit’s case growing its conference empire by getting as many people and companies as possible paying to attend its events.
Web Summit runs a number of global tech conferences, the best known and biggest of which is in Lisbon, which in recent years attracted upwards of 70,000 attendees.
Scrambling in the lead-up to the Lisbon event, Web Summit quickly appointed Wikimedia CEO Catherine Maher as Cosgrave’s CEO replacement, even as Cosgrave retained an 80% ownership of the business.
This piece combines Ai video, Ai photo, 3D CGI, 2D VFX, Motion graphics, 35mm film, digital video and advances in Ai voiceover.
Every current Ai tool was explored and pushed to the maximum.” [I have left “AI” as “Ai” throughout.]
In an apparently now-deleted comment, Walker says that they did ask for access to Joshua, but “were rejected several times.
They didn’t need crew, they didn’t need locations, they didn’t need craft… Filmmakers have to stand together as we traverse this new AI landscape.
Perhaps they underestimated the passion of the creators whose decidedly analog and human-focused processes actually produce original and compelling content.
After frenzied speculation that a recent photo of Kate Middleton and her children was AI generated, the Duchess of Cambridge herself had to address the controversy.
It’s an appropriate amount of hands — eight hands for four people — but they all look a bit off.
So when official Royal Family accounts published the suspicious-looking photo of Kate and her children, the internet had a field day.
Even British celebrities like Piers Morgan have weighed in, raising the question of why the Royal Family won’t quash the conspiracy theories by just releasing the unedited photo.
It’s a good thing that the public was so skeptical about Middleton’s sketchy photo, since she admitted that it was edited.
However, harvesting stem cells is a controversial process, since a major method involves harvesting during pregnancy.
To date, most stem cells are harvested from adult stem cells or post-termination foetal tissue.
Cellcolabs will specialize in Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are scarce and expensive.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Bernow said, “The promise of stem cells or what it holds, is really mind boggling.
“We’ve built this facility, which we believe is one of the world’s largest facilities, solely dedicated for production of this kind of stem cell.
The latest is Recraft, an AI graphic design generator aimed at professionals, which has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures in Silicon Valley, together with former GitHub CEO, Nat Friedman.
Admittedly there are now myriad Generative AI design tools out there, such as Jasper, Adobe Sensei, Let’s Enhance, and many others.
And then you generate images using this style of reference.
But to date, many of the generative AI design solutions have been targeting consumers, rather than professionals that require high degrees of control.
Recraft delivers on professional workflows such as vector images, style controls and end-to-end content production, all powered by in-house built foundation models.”
